My Journey into Discovering My True Self
Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike repetition, emotional truth and autobiographical underpinnings (Tahree, 2013). Oftentimes her work have been criticized for its anger and simplicity and praised for its keen observation of character, wit and lyrical quality. But according to Ms. Kincaid her writing, which are mostly autobiographical, was an act of saving her life by being able to express herself in words. She used her life experiences and placed them on paper as a way to make sense of her past. Her experience of growing up in a strict single-parent West-Indian home was the motivation for many of her writings. The knowledge we garnered at an early age influenced the choice we make throughout our life and this is no more evident than in the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.
Her novel ‘Lucy’ explored the characters Lucy’s life experience in flashback of growing up on a small island and her present life in the United States as well as the relationship between the mother and daughter. This portrayal echoes similarities to that of Kincaid life. Like Kincaid, the cha...
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...ing lecturer and professor at Clearmont College. She is divorced from her husband Allen Shawn, whom she had two children with. Kincaid now resides in Vermont.
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Ferguson, M. (1994). A lot f memory an interview with Jamaica Kincaid. Kenyon Review, 163-188.
Jamaica Kincaid Post Colonial Studies @ Emory University. Emory University. (2013, June 25).
Kincaid, J. (1983). Girl. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux .
Kincaid, J. (1990). Lucy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
SparkNotes Editors (2007). (2014, March 5). Retrieved from SparkNote On Girl: http://www.sparknotes.com/short.stories/girl
Tahree, L. (2013, March 25). Kincaid decleard herself a writer then proceeded to become one. Blade.
In the passage from the novel LUCY, author Jamaica Kincaid dramatizes the forces of self and environment, through her character whose identity is challenged with a move. The new home provided all she needed, but it was all so many changes, she “didn’t want to take in anything else” (15-16). Her old “familiar and predictable past”(40) stayed behind her, and she now had to find who she was in her new life. Kincaid uses detail, metaphor, and tone in the passage to show her character’s internal struggle.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
Lisa Genova, the author of Still Alice, a heartbreaking book about a 50-year-old woman's sudden diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She is a member of the Dementia Advocacy, Support Network International and Dementia USA and is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's Association. Genova's work with Alzheimer's patients has given her an understanding of the disorder and its affect not only on the patient, but on their friends and family as well (Simon and Schuster, n.d.).
Kincaid, Jamaica. The autobiography of my mother . New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. Print.
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
"It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams" (Hurston). An author, especially during the Harlem Renaissance which immediately followed World War One, is someone who took their dream, acted upon it, and made it into something tangible on paper. An author takes their thoughts and creates something beautifully unique each and every time. Being an author takes a lot of strength in order to find your place in the overpopulated industry of up and coming authors-to-be. In any industry, not just writing, it takes a while to find one's special voice and style. A well respected author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston wrote
Andrews, Bart and Watson, Thomas. LOVING LUCY: AN ILLUSTRATED TRIBUTE. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
Rose, innocent waves goodbye to the Nazi soldiers. This shows the theme of viewing war through a child’s eyes. World War 2 was a serious time, where countless died. It was a war. A war that had many different sides. A certain event that 7happened within it was the Holocaust. The historical fiction piece “Rose Blanche” by Robert Innocenti is the story of a young German girl, by the fitting name of Rose Blanche during the Holocaust. She was oblivious during the entire situation. The theme of viewing was through a child’s eye is very prominent throughout the story.
For the purpose of this chapter, these words by Stephen Vincent Benet in his foreword to Margaret Walker’s first volume of poetry, For My People (1942) are really important. They give an idea about the richness of the literary heritage from which Walker started to write and to which she later added. This chapter is up to explore those “anonymous voices” in Walker’s poetry, the cultural and literary heritages that influenced her writings. Margaret Walker’s cultural heritage, like her biological inheritance, extends back to her ancestors in Africa and the Caribbean. It is quite genetic, something she got by birth; which is quite there just by being African American. Echoes of ancient myths, lost history, mixed bloods, and complex identities are brought about along with the skin colour and the racial origins.
In most stories that Kincaid write it has a mother-daughter relationship which her mother highly influenced in her writing. As she said the bible influences her people wonder how. “You’re told not to begin a sentence with ‘And’ as a child” said Kincaid. She also said “And I like to do the things you’re told not to do.” When she was young she used to read the bible and most of the sentences in the bible begin with ‘And’. So the bible influenced her also in her writing. Her Childhood has a big effect in her writing. She was raised in the West Indies Antigua most of her stories take place there. Most of the experiences that she has been through she write them in her
population is oppressed and must ignore or postpone their dreams. The more dreams are postponed
As every well-read person knows, the background in which you grow up plays a huge role in how you write and your opinions. Fuller grew up with a very strict education, learning multiple classic languages before she was eight years old. Fern grew up with writers all throughout her family and had a traditional education and saw first hand the iniquities of what hard-working had to contend with. Through close analysis of their work, a reader can quickly find the connections between their tone, style, content, and purpose and their history of their lives and their educational upbringing.
This book is told from the diary of the main character, Sam Gribley. Sam is a boy full of determination. He didn’t give up and go home like everyone thought he would. He is strong of mind. After the first night in the freezing rain, with no fire and no food, he still went on. He is a born survivor. He lasted the winter, through storms, hunger, and loneliness, and came out on top even when everyone expected him to fail. “The land is no place for a Gribley” p. 9
When company comes,” (3-4). On the other hand, the time during which the poem “Harlem” was written, thus the rise of the Civil Rights Movement era, the sudden occurrence of the drive had an emotional impact on people’s dreams. A look at line 4 of the poem “Harlem”, Hughes uses the image of a festering sore to describe the overheads of deferred dreams. Hughes went on further in line 9 to 10, using imagery to define deferred dreams sag as a heavy load. “Or fester like a sore-(4)....May be it just sags
Literature as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “the body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age”. Literature comes in different variations, languages, and from different countries. Canadian literature is literature made exclusively by an author of Canadian descent that understands what life is as a Canadian. The Canadian play I chose to read was Toronto Mississippi by Joan Macleod. The play has different themes that can be used as to teaching tools in Canadian English classes. The theme of being handicapped is the theme that the play revolves around. The talented playwright Joan Macleod has yet again made another successful play and should be used as teaching tool to teach students in Canadian English classes.